


Nothing Like Him

by gravityfell



Category: Borderlands, Borderlands the pre-sequel, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Angst, College AU, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Handsome Jack - Freeform, Happy Ending, Helios - Freeform, High School AU, Hyperion, Tales from the Borderlands, Timothy Lawrence - Freeform, Vaughn - Freeform, before the pre sequel, borderlands - Freeform, borderlands the pre sequel, non con surgery, post tales ending, rhys - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 07:51:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8154676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravityfell/pseuds/gravityfell
Summary: Timothy, Rhys, and Vaughn had been best friends since High school, so when Timothy took the body double gig and his death was faked, Rhys and Vaughn were left heart broken. Years into the future, they find a man who looks to be the evil tyrant they thought long dead, but it turns out to be the best friend they thought they lost.





	

“Wake up, nerds!”  
Rhys’ voice crackles through their shared echo station. Tim groans, sitting up and reaching over to find his glasses.  
“I’m up, I’m up.”  
Vaughn shoots back, the sound of his joints popping as he moves coming through the echo, making Tim cringe.  
“Yeah, yeah.”  
Tim half-heartedly states, before standing up to get ready. His high school on Eden was moderately prestigious, as where it lacked in actual prestige and talented students, it made up for in wealth, which is precisely why his mother sent him there. He stands in front of his full length mirror, trying to do something with the deep red mop of hair on his head. Tim would place himself at ‘slightly below average’ in terms of attractiveness, with emerald green, a heavy splattering of freckles, soft facial features, and well, just general softness. Tim, despite being 15, 3 months away from being 16, still had quite a bit of baby fat, which he generally tried to hide with baggier clothing, and now that he thought about it, was probably more down to his affinity for sweets more than anything else.  
Tim walked through the school gates, scanning the yard for his two best friends, Vaughn and Rhys. Timothy was perfectly aware of the fact Rhys and Vaughn were closer to each other than they were to him, that he an outsider in the trio, but he didn’t really care, he was just happy to have friends, even if he was second best. Both his friends were undeniably pretty, Rhys being tall and lanky, with light brown eyes and hair to match, with a sharp jawline and chiselled cheekbones. Vaughn on the other hand was much shorter, but sporting the same light brown eyes and hair duo.  
“Hey guys.”  
Tim states as Rhys and Vaughn smile up at him.  
“Hey Tim tam!”  
Vaughn shoots back and Rhys just waves. Tim rolls his eyes at the nickname and sits down.  
“So Tim, Vaughn and I were talking, and we think we’re going to join Hyperion.”  
Timothy cocks an eyebrow at that.  
“You need to go to college though. And backstab, you gotta backstab also.”  
Tim would rather not join one of the big corporations, especially not Hyperion. The closest station they have near Eden-5 is smack bang in the middle of Pandora and Elpis, which as far as Tim has heard, are both shit holes. Not to mention Hyperion’s CEO, Tassiter, is a massive douche, and the guy who organised the construction of the space port Helios is some lowly programmer named Jack or John, something like that, apparently a cocky guy with a major hero complex. So Tim isn’t too hot on joining Hyperion.  
“Naw come on Tim. It’s one of, if not the biggest corporation in the galaxy! Plus, to be qualified you need a minimum of 3 years in college to be an accountant or something.”  
Rhys responds, hitting him on the shoulder lightly.  
Timothy isn’t good at maths, or science, or much at all really. He still gets good grades, but that is solely down to him putting in a LOT of effort.  
“Yeah, a corporation, I’d rather not.”  
Tim is pretty set on owning his own bakery, he can cook pretty well and it’s much more cushy than a life full of blood, guns, and vault hunting.  
If Tim knows anything, it’s that he’ll never be a vault hunter. But if he stays on Eden to pursue his bakery dream, Vaughn and Rhys will no doubt leave for Helios anyway, and he’ll be completely alone, again. His mother couldn’t give two shits about him, and Tim doesn’t even know who his father is, so in all honesty, he is very dependent on Rhys and Vaughn for love.  
“Tim, if the three of us join Hyperion together, we’ll be unstoppable!”  
$845,000, that’s the total sum of his student loans. Timothy was eventually persuaded by Rhys and Vaughn to go to college and join Hyperion. Now that all three of them were graduated, they were about a year off from joining Hyperion, as they all still had the Hyperion official training course to complete, then they would be shipped off to Helios station to start their new life or something like that. Vaughn was going into accounting, Rhys programming, and Tim was going into engineering. His job would mostly be in Research and Development, although he definitely wasn’t a scientist, his job would be to supervise gun development, and help produce new Hyperion weapons. However, he got a call last week from some doctor based on Eden about a special job for Hyperion, one that would pay far better than his current position, which Timothy really needed. It was a 6-year contract that would be able to pay off all his student loans, plus extra. The only thing that made him hesitant to apply was that they refused to disclose exactly what the job was, which meant it could be anything. Timothy stepped into the clinic, hand shaking, and took a seat in one of the plastic chairs running along the wall. He’d been told to come in, take a seat, and wait for his name to be called. Sketchy as all, but Tim was desperate. He has no doubt Rhys and Vaughn would quickly move up the Hyperion food chain, both were nice, but not afraid to do a little backstabbing, whereas Tim could never do something like that, and would spend the rest of his life haunted by student loans and working 7 days a week just to get by.  
“Mr Lawrence?”  
A man entered the room.  
“Oh yeah, that’s me.”  
The doctor smiled down at him.  
“Timothy, Please go through the door on your right, your interviewer will be waiting for you.”  
Like a job interview. The entire thing still seemed off to Tim.  
“Do I, Uh, need to sign some papers or-“  
Before he could finish he was cut off.  
“Through the door please!”  
The man sounded angry, desperate.  
“No, wait! How do I know this isn’t some scam to get my kidneys?”  
Timothy didn’t actually think it would be something as severe as that, but it still worried him that they wouldn’t tell him any details about what his job would be.  
“You applied for this position because you needed money. Beggars can’t be choosers!”  
To be fair, he was contacted about this position, he didn’t technically apply.  
“But, I…”  
What’s the harm? Tim sighs, he’ll take the job.  
“Okay, alright, I’m ready.”  
The man smiled, a fake and uneasy smile.  
“Very good Timothy.”  
Tim stands up, and slowly make his way towards the room, taking a deep breath. As he takes his first step in the room, he feels a sharp prick on the side of his neck before everything goes black.  
When Tim awakens everything is numb. He can’t feel his face, or his leg, or anything and it freaks him out.  
“What the hell happened?!”  
He should have known that this wouldn’t end well.  
“It’s okay, it’s just the side effects of the surgery.”  
Tim almost screams.  
“SURGERY?”  
The doctor shoots him an almost empathetic look, handing Timothy a mirror. When he looks down, what he sees isn’t himself. It’s some other guy, with mismatched blue and green eyes, a slender chiselled face, and a thick mop of brown hair. Everything about Timothy’s appearance was changed. He looked down at his body, through the hospital gown he could see, abs? Even as a young adult, Tim was still sort of chubby, but now he was slender and handsome, with abs for goodness sake. He would have been happy, he’s pretty attractive now, but this would have to have something to do with this job he’d been selected for.  
“Who the hell am I?”  
The doctor smiles at this question.  
“You are your employer. A body double for Jack.”  
Timothy wants to cry. If he knows anything from movies, a body double gig includes destruction of individuality and a fake death.  
“Timothy Lawrence will no longer exist. We will need to fake your death and destroy your records. Timothy Lawrence, at least on paper, will no longer exist.”  
Called it.  
“But doctor, I still sound like myself.”  
The doctor picks up what looks like a tube off the table, holding it up for Tim to see.  
“We’re going to fit a voice modulator to fix that.”  
The last thing Tim sees before he sleeps is the doctors menacing smile.  
When he is awoken again, it’s different, everything hurts, especially his throat.  
“Guah, my throat really hurts.”  
He almost jumps at the sound of his voice, well, it’s not really his. This voice is smoother, deeper than his voice. Tim always hated the high pitch whine of his own voice, but he’s really starting to regret the decision to go through with this. Is it even legal to knock someone out and force them to become a doppelganger? Un-bloody-likely!  
“Yes the voice modulator may cause some pain for the next 2 or 3… decades.”  
30 years? He’ll, hopefully, have his old face back by then!  
“I have to speak like Jack for the next 30 years?! My contract will be up by then!”  
The doctor doesn’t really seem to care.  
“Your presence has been requested on the moon.”  
Eden doesn’t have a moon what the he-, oh, he must mean Elpis, Pandora’s moon. Of course.  
“What will I be doing there.”  
The doctor looks back down at his clip board.  
“I think Jack wants you to help him find an Elpis vault, something like that, Vault hunter.”  
Timothy almost chokes, of all the things in the world, the one thing, even in this position, he thought he’d never be it was a Vault hunter. Stupid ass friends, convincing him to go to a stupid ass college, making him join a stupid ass corporation, ruining his stupid ass life.

Tim was there, hidden, when the news of his death was broken to those he knew. His mother laughed, which wasn’t really a shock, she was probably happy to have him out of her life. What really hurt was the devastated looks of Vaughn and Rhys’ faces, seeing his two best friends break down into horrible, heart wrenching sobs, blaming themselves for his “suicide”. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to run out there, tell them it was okay, but would only lead to their deaths, not his, theirs.

After he helped Jack and the other vault hunters save the moon, and find the Elpis vault, life only got worse for Tim. Not only was he now a certified vault hunter, he looked like one of the most hated people, had no friends, and lived in constant fear that Jack would either brand or kill him. At this moment, the latter seemed more likely, Jack was making more Doppelgangers than loaders, and of them all, Tim was the least like Jack. He kept his timid, kind attitude the entire time, and even if he tried to act like jack, he was too awkward to pull it off. That’s why, when Athena entered his room, knife in hand, he thought it was the end of him. Whereas, to his shock, she grabbed his arm, cutting out the Hyperion Trackers buried deep beneath his skin. Tim had been shot more times than he could count on both hands, so the sharp sting of the knife digging into his skin was nothing to him.  
“Thena? What are you doing?”  
The woman said nothing, wrapping his arm up in bandages she bought. Even though her stoic, seamlessly emotionless demeanour was diametrically opposed to his own, they still managed to become friends. Regardless, if the price was right, Tim isn’t sure if Athena would turn down the money to kill him, to keep her and her “friend” Janey fed.  
“Getting you out of here. I overheard Jack talking about branding you, and I’m not gonna let that happen.”  
The mention of branding makes Tim feel sick to his stomach. Jack wasn’t always bad. Tim thinks Jack’s mental stability really started to decline after the Meriff’s betrayal, and how shit it really was becoming evident when he killed Gladstone and the other scientists for no real reason.  
“What if Jack finds out?”  
Not that anyone could really hurt Athena, she was the strongest person Tim had ever met, but she needed this job for money, Jack sized cash as she called it.  
“Screw Jack, he’s insane, we need to get you away from here, now!”  
After she finished patching him up, she lifted him up over her shoulder, and made a run for it. Her holding him was in a way needed, as she ran 3 times faster than he could, even with the weight of a grown man on her shoulder. Athena basically threw Tim into her escape ship, jumped into the captains seat and took off as fast as she could, basically unnoticed by all security measures from Helios.  
“This ship only has enough fuel to make it to Pandora. You can stay with Janey and I until we find another place for you to stay.”  
She smiled at him, positioning the ship towards Pandora.  
“Thanks a lot Thena, really.”  
Tim says, because he doesn’t really have words to express his gratitude.  
“Don’t mention it, Tim.”  
The mix of pure glee and true agony he feels when he hears his real name is confusing. It reminds him of who he is, that he isn’t Jack, but also the feeling of loss, he lost his friends, his identity, his freckles, in all honesty, he used to like his freckles.  
After a month of living with Athena and Springs he learnt two things;  
Athena and Springs are definitely more than just friends,  
and living on Pandora with the face of Handsome Jack is tough. Tim was seriously considering wearing a “I’m not Jack” sign or shirt of something, but decided letting his hair go back to his natural red and growing a beard may be easier. Tim’s never liked beards, they’re itchy and feel gross, but an itchy face is better than being dead, or worse, being found by Hyperion.  
But he’d finally found a decently safe place to live in, and had a good collection of gun in case any Bandits tried to mess with him. Tim knows he’ll be okay if he isn’t captured by Hyperion, because he’s a Vault Hunter.  
The day the great Titan Helios fell it had been a normal day for Tim. Just as the day Handsome Jack himself died had been. Timothy was washing dishes, when he heard alarms going off on Helios. If only one or two were going, you couldn’t hear them from Pandora, but once those one or two turned into six or seven, the blaring alarms could be heard clear as day. Tim ran his fingers through his long red hair before glancing out the window. Flashes of light were coming from Helios, as were thousands of escape pods, rushing towards Pandora.  
“The hell?”  
Tim whispered to himself. He ran outside of his house, looking up at the moon base as it shuddered violently, losing its Lagrange orbit. Tim almost felt his heart stop. Vaughn and Rhys were up there, if Helios fell they’d almost certainly die. Even an escape pod only gives you a 50/50 chance of landing survival. He hadn’t spoken to them since the day before his doppelganger surgery, but they were still his best friends. Tim hoped to god they were both lucky enough to make it out alive. Just as Tim was about to call Janey and Athena, a blinding light came from the sky, followed by the loudest sound he had ever heard. He looked back up only to be met with Helios breaking apart, chunks of the space station soaring down to the surface of Pandora, each impact shaking the planet’s surface so violently it could be compared to the Eye of Helios striking down on Elpis. Finally, the eye hit Pandora, causing the planet to shudder so violently Tim was thrown to his knees and the tiles of his roof started to break off, one hitting him on the back of his head, knocking him unconscious.  
When he awoke he was in bed with a throbbing headache.  
“Guah, what the heck.”  
He mumbles to himself.  
“How’s your head doin’ Tim Tam?”  
Janey asks. Tim smiles at the nickname, the one Vaughn used to use.  
“I’ve felt better.”  
He states, slowly sitting up. He looks around the room and realised he was in Athena and Janey’s bed. Yikes, they’ve probably ‘done the do’ in the this thing.  
“Why’d you bring me here?”  
He asks as Athena walks into the room, carrying a glass of water.  
“We came to make sure you didn’t somehow die as Helios crashed. When we arrived you were knocked out cold and half your roof was missing.”  
She says, sitting the glass on the nightstand for Tim. He smiles are her and takes a sip.  
“Do we know if any of the Hyperion workers survived?”  
He queries, a glint of hope in his eyes.  
“Some definitely did, I think most of them have hauled up in whatever’s left of Helios.”  
Janey replies, chuckling lightly. Tim rolls over, covering his head with the sheets. He will sleep in this bed even if it is tainted with sex.

It takes 3 months for Tim to finally work up the courage to visit what is left of Helios. He knows that Rhys and Vaughn may be dead, or living somewhere else completely, but he has to look. His internal excuse for taking so long was that he had to fix his roof first, but it was really out of fear that he’d find them dead. He makes his way up a pile of rubble, his long hair tied back, and his beard trimmed. He was overtly aware of how much he looked like Jack, he did have his face, but his beard was too long to cope with, and climbing this shit, in this heat, with his hair out? No thanks. When he reaches the top, he can see the unmistakeable Eye of Helios, and inside and around it, he can see people. That’s a start. He pulls out a pair of binoculars, looking around the camp. Right at the entrance he sees a headless statue of Handsome Jack, with ‘Rhys’ written in red. His heart pounds. That has to mean Rhys is here right? And if Rhys is here, Vaughn surely is too. He hops down from the mountain of rubble, and starts to quietly make his way through the camp, hiding behind pillars when he can. He leans against a wall to take a drink, when he is met by a horrified ex-Hyperion worker, who runs off screaming. Great, now whoever is in charge is going to be notified of someone with Handsome Jack’s face slinking around their camp. Not good, really not good. He considers running, but he’s come so far, he needs to know if Rhys and Vaughn are okay. He continues to run around the side until he is knocked down onto the sand by someone, something metal holding his face into the ground.  
“What the fuck are you doing at my camp, Jack.”  
The voice, spits out the name with such hatred.  
“Wait I swear I’m not him.”  
He mumbles into the sand. What feels now like a metal hand spins him onto his back, knee on his chest to keep him down. When he looks up, he can’t help the smile growing on his face.  
“Rhys.”  
He whispers. Rhys looks different, he now has one orange eye, a metal arm, but is still very pretty. A man, with a bun and beard joins him, short and, oh god it’s Vaughn. This would be a wonderful moment if they didn’t think he was someone else.  
“Let me explain, Rhys, Vaughn, it’s me Tim.”  
Rhys’ fist connects with his face, leaving a harsh sting.  
“Guah metal fist, dude, hurts more than normal fist.”  
If looks could kill, Tim would be dead.  
“Don’t you dare mention him! Tim died, and for you to say you’re him, you filthy asshole. I killed you, how are you back.”  
Tim swears he can see tears in Rhys’ eyes, Vaughn’s too.  
“Look I got an offer for a job that would make more money than my designated one at Hyperion. Turns out that job was to be Jack’s body double. I got surgery and I have a voice modulator. If you let go off my arms, I know how to-“  
Rhys punches Tim in the throat.  
“Guah, dude, are you trying to kill me?”  
The voice that comes through isn’t Jack’s, but Tim’s. Timothy discovered a couple months ago, after a play fight with Janey that ended up with her accidently punching him in the throat, that if he got punched in the throat, his voice modulator would temporarily disable for about a minute. The look of Rhys and Vaughn’s face would have been funny in literally any other situation.  
“Oh my god it’s definitely Tim.”  
Vaughn says, pushing Rhys off Tim and engulfing him in a hug, Rhys joining in.  
“You have some serious explaining to do.”  
Rhys says, holding out his hand to help Timothy up. Tim nods, accepting his hand.

It took Tim an hour to sufficiently explain to his friends as to why he has Jack’s face, the Elpis vault, and how he escaped. In turn it took Rhys and Vaughn another hour to go over their Gortys adventure, new friends, and most importantly, AI Jack.  
“Was that AI created by Nakayama by any chance?”  
Tim asks, wincing slightly.  
“Yeah, on his flash drive thingy.”  
Vaughn explained. Tim face palmed.  
“Guah, I helped him make the first version of that thing. To be fair Jack was way less evil back then, and I definitely didn’t think that Nakayama douche would make it into a sentient being.”  
Rhys sighed.  
“He’s the reason we crashed Helios in the first place.”  
Tim laughed.  
“Of course it was you who crashed the damn space station.”  
Rhys shot Tim a dirty look, Vaughn laughed.  
“You know how hard it is to live on this planet when you look like that jackass?”  
He says, laughing slightly at his own pun.  
“I can’t even imagine Tim Tam, but hey, at least you’re nothing like him.”

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if this ending sucks, but thanks for reading


End file.
